Rita's Ramblings: a basically house-bound woman in Fargo, North Dakota blogging for friends, family, and anybody who finds it interesting. I talk about art or craft projects, my grandson (Ian), the weather, movies, books, health, and whatever happens to be going on in my life. Welcome!

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Karma's warming her belly in the sun this morning. I've already got a load of clothes in the dryer and a second one in the washer. Not that often I feel more energetic when I wake up, so I take advantage of it. :)

I already got Mark's book of poetry in the mail yesterday! So nice of him!! Guess I have something to read today. :)

Oh--BTW--don't bother to buy the anti-static dryer balls. The little foam things break off in the dryer. I've been losing them one by one. The regular ones are still in one piece and working just fine. I think you just have to deal with more static and finding socks in strange places if you use dryer balls. These anti-static balls have never worked at all that I could tell.

The sun is shining and not much wind our way. It's only 11 degrees but must feel a lot warmer on the sunny porch. Karma has begged to go out three times since I got up. Do cats get spring fever? :):)

Friday, February 26, 2010

Okay--I am back on the McLap. Dagan emailed me back and told me to hold down the "on" button until the laptop shut off and then turn it on again and see if that worked. It did. But things are still not quite right and it has frozen up again since. So--I think I do want all the PC stuff taken back off of the McLap--too brain scrambling for it. We'll see.

This all bores Karma to tears and gives me a headache--hehe!

Dagan and Leah picked up bleach for me so I can continue to work on the carpet stain this weekend. I should end up with big white stains--but that is a lot better than big brown stains--hehe!

I spent my good hours yesterday working on my question and answer interview for John Reid's monthly newsletter. I started several times. Finally decided to stop being nervous and worrying about how proper or polished it was and just answer like I was talking to someone while we were sitting over a cup of coffee at my craft table--like I do here on the blog--hehe! Just be yourself, right? Speak your truth and let the chips fall where they may. :)

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Confession. I got the crazy idea to use Karma's paw print for her signature on a thank you card.

Karma was, shall we say, a tad bit uncooperative about having her foot dabbed on an ink pad--let alone having it pressed onto a piece of cardstock. Her paw print just looked like one big, ugly, green smear. I apologized and promised her I would never put her through an ordeal like that ever again--hehe

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She finally forgave me. Cuddled up with me later in the evening. ;)

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We had sun yesterday.

Today is cloudy, but warmer. Supposed to get up into the 20s! Not sure how the day will transpire, yet--but I hope you have a wonderful day!! :):)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

I am back on the desk computer--which Dagan cleaned free of virus last night. While he was cleaning out the virus on the desk PC he was transporting all the brain information from the desktop (that we had stored in that portable device) into the McLap. I had over 11,000 pictures!!?? Pictures I have actually taken with the digital camera (or Leah or ones people have sent me) and pictures I have saved off the web for art and craft purposes (probably the majority).

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So, this morning I go to put the pictures I currently had in my camera into the McLap--the same windows popped up and everything looked the same, so I moved them and then deleted them from my camera. I opened up a new post for my blog, went to upload a picture--but I couldn't find them! Different windows came up--new instructions? There were no picture thumbnails anymore--just PDF things with numbers. I tried to look at where it said "today" (new things to click on--unfamiliar)--but a whole slew of those PDF pictures came up--nothing I recognized--way more than I had in my camera? I tried "Yesterday"--I knew I'd get masses of PDF numbers--but I had put a couple pictures on yesterday, so I scrolled way-way-way down to the bottom hoping to find thumbnails...nope. I tried to close the page--hit the red "x".....

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.....and ever since then I have this rainbow colored beach ball spinning away and I can't click on anything at all on the McLap. I am thinking the spinning ball might be like the hourglass on a PC and it is having to work it's way thru 11,000 pictures or something? Who knows? But if that is the case...they need to come back out. The ball has been spinning for about 35 minutes now.

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I hope we didn't somehow put a virus from the PC into the McLap! Or maybe we scrambled the McLap's brains trying to put copies of PC brains into it??

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I am bummed.

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See why I always need two computers of some kind? Now the desk computer works and the McLap doesn't. :(

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At the moment I feel like I could be a lump in a chair today, too.

I'm sure I'll perk up...but this will worry me until the McLap works again. I am hoping we can remove what we put in there from the PC and I'll just accumulate everything new into the McLap. Or maybe I DO need to buy a Windows program that can read the PC brains. Something will work out. Has to, right?

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The other bad news--it is goodbye BigBite! Leah spent a looong time trying out the BigBite while Dagan had both computers tied up. She thought it might have been me, too--hehe! And it could have been--but she had the same problems. No matter what she did or tried--she got the nasty backsides on the eyelets, too. They split much more unevenly and rougher with sharp edges than when we use the hammer and setting tool. And they don't lie flat--sit way up off the paper like I showed you. Ridiculous! Sadly--we are two of the unsatisfied customers. And Leah is my tool girl! If she can't get it to work...

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So--Leah took the receipt, the BigBite, and many samples of how poorly it works with her last night. She is going to see if she can bring it back to the local JoAnn's rather than ship it back to the warehouse. Either reimburse us or give us store credit. We shop a lot there, so I am thinking positive and assuming that they will be nice about it, right? Store credit would be just fine with us. Anyways, after all that--we are back to the old hammer method. :(

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Okay--something more cheerful. I haven't really been saying anything about the Creative Every Day group. They have themes for the month. February's was "home". I have thought about it as I have read the emails from the group during the month. I am "home" almost 99.98% of the time. It is my sanctuary. The physical manifestation of my "safe place". My home is a place of joy and creativity for me. But also--it's my spot under the porch--that place hurt animals go to heal and lick their wounds. Where I can just plain endure the pain and be left alone sometimes, you know?

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I absolutely love turning the key in my door. Who knew Nirvana was in Fargo?!! :)

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I watched a movie yesterday called Where The Heart Is. I loved it! Made you think about what really constitutes home and family?

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Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman) is a 15-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside in Sequoyah, Okla., and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. In short order, some eccentric, kindly strangers (including StockardChanning and Ashley Judd) "adopt" Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.

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I love movies with interesting yet ordinary characters that overcome obstacles--lifts your soul. :) But I don't like when they cross over that fine line into sappy melodrama. Some leap over the line, you know? This movie has some excellent, excellent actors who know how to dance between humor and sorrow. There's a cameo by Sally Field that blew me away!

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On that note on another sunny, cold morning...have a wonderful day!! :):)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Karma knows all the signs of Caroline's eminent arrival--her toys picked up, trash collected, etc. The office called (not Caroline) saying that I needed to sign a new rent agreement and she could stop by in a few minutes. (Rent went up a little after all--govt--not West Winds.)

The second Karma heard someone knock on the door she ran and took her "Caroline" position under the end table.

Made me chuckle! She is a creature of habit--as am I, I guess. But the next call was Caroline and her car wouldn't start--poor thing! She had no idea what was wrong with it or if it had just frozen up in the subzero weather or what. So--she'll call me to reschedule as soon as she has a car again. Car troubles! Hate dealing with car troubles! I hope it isn't anything that will end up being costly for her.

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Meanwhile--the Big Bite saga continues. Those of you who aren't interested in crafting dilemmas can skip down past the end of the eyelet pictures--hehe! But for my fellow crafters--I took pictures--and I am getting frustrated.

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This is the metal bump part that you have to balance the end of the eyelet tube on.

Line up the eyelet, eh? On the base?

Here I am using a piece of regular red paper. As you can see, once you have the eyelet in the hole, you can't actually see where that little metal bump is...

...so you try to line it up by feel--and it tends to tip around all over the place--and occasionally fall out out of the hole altogether so that you have to start over.

But you can kind of try to line them up as you are slowly lower the top cube--and then press gently. The back looks dreadful...

...but the front looks really good.

Problem--with the back so high (and the edges are really ragged) the paper isn't going to lie flat for layering. So I tried to reinsert the eyelet and pressed as hard as I could. Well, I can see why they warn against pressing too hard. It split the eyelet on the top..

..and this is what the back looked like. Not great--flatter, but still not flat. *sigh*

So--I got out my tiny hammer...

...and tried this tricky contraption with a piece of cardstock.

Same troubles with having the eyelets actually pop out while I was trying to "feel" the metal bump (I now have lost a couple of eyelets somewhere in the carpeting under the table).

With the gentle clicking sound the eyelets are set and they do look nice on top...

...but the backside!!?? Come on!! How can you use this on a card?

I took the hammer and tried to, as gently as possible, pound down the edges of the back of the eyelet--which marred the paper (you could see the hammer marks thru to the front) because I was trying to angle the hammer so I wouldn't flatten the front of the eyelet. *sigh* Flatter--but still nowhere near as flat as we have gotten them with the old hammer method. ??

The top looked really nice, tho.

BUT--the whole point in buying this was so that we didn't have to use the hammer, right? And if the eyelets sit so awfully high off the paper your layering is going to look pretty strange and lumpy-bumpy. ?? I have never used tags on my blog before--but I am going to add a tag for this frustrating machine and hope that somebody who knows some secrets about how to use it will come by and share them with me.

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Dagan and Leah will be over tonight. I'm wondering if Leah will be able to figure this out better than I have? Maybe she has the magic touch? I'll let you know.

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I called Professor Vinz yesterday and he did remember me! :) It was so nice to chat with him again. We exchanged email addresses. He went back and looked up the list of students from our class--spring of 2003. Seven years already! wow!

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I couldn't remember when the class was or the names of all the students--no surprise to those of you who know me--hehe! I can tell you what they looked like, mannerisms, things they wrote about, how they laughed, what kind of person I thought they were--but not remember their names. Sad, but true. A lifelong curse of forgetting "labels"--be it people, times, dates, streets, titles--you name it. I guess I'm a "content" person--ROFL!!

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Anyways, we had a nice chat and he was happy for me. Even sent me a touching poem of his to read in his email!! :):) Nice!

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I worked on a couple of letters yesterday. Am almost caught up with my snail-mail correspondence. Got half-way thruIronman with Robert Downey, Jr. and will finish watching that today.

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Craft Night tonight. Leah decided that she should probably take some time to work on updating the Etsy account--and Craft Nights would give her designated time to do that. So she's been busy taking pictures of product and will work on posting tonight. I told her we should do that for a couple weeks or however long it takes. She has some jewelry that she has never gotten up for sale, etc. So--great idea!! I know I will sidetrack her with the Big Bite, tho--hehe! But she can leave pictures in my McLap and I can work on posting during the week, also. :)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

My time got sucked up on youtube yesterday--hehe! Watching videos on the Big Bite..which got me watching other craft videos, of course. :)

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I explained in great detail in a reply to Sue's comment yesterday what the issues are with the Big Bite. I suppose I could copy and paste it here for those of you who are interested.

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The problem with the instructions--"Place eyelet, snap, or other embellishment in the hole in your project and then line up the BASE of the tool in the hole of the snap or eyelet and compress the handle"--is the lining up part.

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You can (1)try to balance the tube on the backside of the eyelet on a slippery little metal bump--with a piece of paper blocking your view entirely, of course. (2)try to hold the sometimes bendable piece of paper up against that top protruding prong and keep the eyelet hole inside the little prong as the square piece moves down. Or (3)try to hold the eyelet and paper in midair and center it or line them up as the pieces come together. When I watched people do it on the videos it looked like most people were using method one. Kind of laying the paper and eyelet on the bump and using a "feel-ly" method to guess that the eyelet was centered on the metal bump (because you can't see it with the paper in the way and it's basically a balancing act until the prong part reaches it). But if you have the paper too far down on the eyelet--they tip. When they tip they seem to really split badly on the back...?? Such is my learning curve so far. :):)

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I did find the video where the lady said to use a different setting than they recommended, so I'll try that. And I found reviews that said it worked better with their embellishments--that some brands tended to split very unevenly. That may be the case with mine. I know Leah and I had that trouble using certain eyelets with the hammer setting method, too. So, I'm going to try some different eyelets brands, too, that we have--just to see if some work better than others. :)****

They tell you to balance the eyelet tube on the BASE--so that is probably the best method. I had to try others, tho, of course. I should try to remember today to take a closeup of the metal thingies I'm talking about for you crafters. :)

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The sun is shining today! So--of course--that means we have dipped just below zero. Beautiful morning to look at from inside where it is warm, tho--hehe!

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I was restless sleeping. A little nervous about calling my (now retired) poetry professor, Mark Vinz, from MSUM this morning. I finally worked up my nerve to call him yesterday, but he wasn't home. I talked with his wife and she said to call him this morning around 9:30-10am to tell him about winning the prize with a poem I wrote for his class. :)

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Professor Vinz is a true poet. Has had many book of poetry published and has taught poetry for decades. Knows so many Midwestern poets personally. We had just the best group of students in that small class--laughed every day--enjoyed each other's company--supportive--insightful. It was magical!!!

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I think he'll remember me because Mark was the one who suggested to me that after we left his class to gather together half a dozen writers from that class to continue meeting and form a writer's group. (There were some really talented writers in that class--where I could hardly wait to see what they had written next!) We met at my apartment in Moorhead for maybe a year and a half or so--four gals and two guys. That is how I got to know Jennifer. (Remember how young and shy you were, Jennifer? hehe!)

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Anyways, Mark will probably remember how I used to say in class, "I'm not a poet, ya know"--till he and the class told me they were sick of hearing it--ROFL!! But I had only written a handful of poems in my life since my teenage/young adult years and the only poets I knew of were the ones we studied in high school in the late 60s--Dickinson, Frost, Wordsworth, Longfellow, e. e. cummings, Poe, Shelley, Keats, and Shakespeare. And I didn't remember much about them after over 30 years. I felt way over my head. Out of the poetry loop, so to speak.

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Feel funny about calling. Must be that Swede/Scandinavian thing in me--feels like bragging, ya know? I didn't even send an email to my folks, brother, and sister until a couple days ago. And yet I have talked about it on the blog here. Silly, I know. :)

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Well, I will call Professor Vinz this morning. Caroline comes this afternoon. Been getting some letters written, too--using some of the new cards I've made. I think the day will fly by. :):)

Monday, February 22, 2010

Good Morning! Another week begins...last week in February already. Seems like it was just New Year's Eve. :)

So nice to be back on days again.

I did get the Crop-A-Dile Big Bite out of the packaging yesterday--a feat in itself--hehe!

Just grabbed some of the packaging for experimenting. They immediately looked good from the top, I thought.

The backsides were all mangled--some more than usual. But I am not sure how to position the eyelet before you press down? I tried putting it up against the top part of the press and then balance it against the bottom part. There must be a trick to this? Oh--and I pounded lightly on the backside of the top button eyelets with my tiny hammer and then they looked flatter.

I decided I would look on youtube and see if I can find anything helpful as to how to position the eyelets in the contraption before I use up any more eyelets. I think that is the key.

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Regardless--they look nice and round on the top--tada!! That is exactly what we wanted and why we bought it! Leah and I never let the backsides show, anyways. We always layer the paper so they don't show because they never look good on that split backside. At least not the way we do them or any I have seen. But if somebody actually wanted the backs to show and look nice, my first impression is that the Big Bite can't perform any miracles on the eyelet splitting unevenly problem. I had no such expectations--but did expect them to split more evenly? Basically wanted something that could attach the eyelets and leave them nice and round on the top because we tend to flatten them with the hammer method. It is so annoying to have one squished eyelet mar an otherwise lovely card, you know? Now I just need to figure out the best placement and dial positions to get them to end up the flattest on the back that I can manage and I will be very happy.

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So--first impressions:

I can see why people complained that the instructions are limited and there's not enough information given. You don't know where toactually place the eyelet and paper--close to the top, the bottom, in between? There's no solid spot to put them, as far as I have found so far--a lot of looseness and wiggle room, shall we say. And which way to place the top and bottom dials is pretty hard for an old lady with bifocals to even read on the machine (small, black raised on black). They only provide some basic information--true. We already saw on youtube that people used different settings than they told you to use and it worked better?? I need to go back and watch again--look for videos. And keep experimenting with it, of course.

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What do I think of it? Well, I am fairly confident that I can find the most efficient way to place/center the eyelets in the contraption to end up with the flattest backside. Getting the eyelets in the best position so that the backs split as evenly as possible will probably come with time and use--and I wish it was easier. Despite my fumbling around and not knowing what I was doing--the tops all turned out nice and round! So--I'm already happy enough that I bought it. I can only assume it will become easier as I use it. But--it is one of those items that only time will tell if I like it any better. My criteria will be if I consistently get nice round tops. I'll put up with a bit of annoyance for that end result--hehe! I'll let you know. ;)

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I forgot to mention that a couple days ago I saw three police cars in the parking lot. Curious thing we don't see here. Later on that day they said on TV that a bloodied man was trying to get someone to let him in my building--pushing the various buttons--and someone called the police. But I never heard any follow-up information. Not sure if he was stabbed, shot, in an accident of some kind, or what? If anybody local heard--let me know, okay?

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Overcast day--fog--16 degrees--hint of fine snow flakes. Could be the wind just shifting the snow off the roof. Feels like a good day. :):)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The fun for me is in the challenge. Since the scraps that we used are all the same size (we're recycling bookcard scraps) you have to figure out different ways to decorate them. As you've probably noticed, Leah and I both like fairly simple cards, too--and with these cards--it's all about the paper. Ah yes--I am a paper lover--hehe! :)

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The colors! The prints! Calming, nostalgic, invigorating, silly, retro, bold, soft...ahhh! I am so glad I took a leap out of my comfort zone the past couple of years. (Everything I made used to be more like the 4th and 6th cards.) This has been great fun! A kind of spirit stretching--hehe!

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I had a little bit of bleach left and did a little more work on the carpet with the SpotBot. Was getting ready for bed early--and got a call from a friend in Hibbing who has been caretaking her mother who has Alzheimer's. Her mother fell and broke her hip. The hip surgery went well...but then she suddenly crashed shortly afterwards--heart failure--kidney failure--and then she was gone.

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It was actually a blessing. Her mother couldn't always remember where the bathroom was any more. She also had terrible back pain and wasn't happy being unable to do all the things she used to do. So--it was sad--and yet I was happy for her mother--to be free again, you know? I think her mother is probably gardening again right now! :) :)

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We talked over 2 1/2 hours. It will be a huge life shift for her after taking care of someone else 24/7 for such a long time.

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The only thing you can count on in this life is change. And the only thing you can't avoid is death. Looking back--the fuss I made over some things that seemed so important at the time really seem quite silly a few decades later--hehe!

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One day I hope to be sharing and creating somewhere...and I just pray I won't have been too much of a burden before I leave. A comforting vision. :):)

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Was nice out yesterday. Not much wind--so I was actually warm and felt overdressed by the time I got home with my Crop-A-Dile 2.

The Big Bite makes big promises...

Yes--that is a CD/DVD in that last picture! Big promises. Let's hope Leah and I are a couple of people who can actually figure out how to use this contraption--hehe! The people who loved it were crazy about it.

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The rest of the afternoon I spent using the SpotBot. Here's a picture before I started yesterday. This was after trying Basic H, the carpet cleaner that came with the machine, Woolite spray on foam carpet cleaner, and lemon juice.

The next thing I tried was Shaklee's version of Lysol--Basic G.

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Karma was both intrigued and a bit frightened by the SpotBot. (When Leah was using it before, Karma hid under the bed--so she had never seen it in action.)

It stops and starts and sprays and scrubs...

...a lot of solitary activity for a new inanimate object that Karma has seen quietly sitting around for days. So she began to suspect other new objects...

...like the McLap's cord thingie--hehe! She smacked it around a little--just in case.

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The Basic G didn't do anything, either. So--it was last resort time. Bleach. And--FINALLY!! I can see progress!! :):)

It turned out I didn't have much bleach left--so I need to get some more. But I think this will be the best solution to the problem--tada! I can see the light (carpet) at the end of the tunnel--hehe!

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Once I stopped using the SpotBot--Karma went all crazy over it!!??

Rubbing and twisting...

...and rolling...

...like it was catnip!

I don't think bleach smells anything like catnip--but then I don't have Karma's nose or understand her feline thought processes--ROFL! She rubbed the heck out of that SpotBot, tho--for her own private reasons. :)

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Being out and about...I was in bed before 7pm. Been up since about 2am. Closer to normal hours still. Happy. :)

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I watched a movie: Coco Before Chanel.

Audrey Tautou stars as legendary French designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in this lively biopic that explores the fashion icon's storied ascension from orphan to seamstress and cabaret singer and ultimately, the queen of Parisian haute couture.Alessandro Nivola plays Arthur "Boy" Capel, Chanel's lover and influential business investor who makes a lifelong impact on the young woman. Anne Fontaine directs this Oscar nominee for Best Costume Design.

I knew nothing about Coco. The movie tells the story of her young adulthood and the path to her fame. Was both enlightening and entertaining. Audrey Tautou was wonderful in the part, of course. Coco really changed women's restrictive clothing and had a much broader impact than I ever realized.

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Well, another weekend has arrived. We could have a little snow today, but supposed to be in the 20s still. Nice! I wonder what the weekend holds in store? :):)